Solution 3: Update the network adapter driver

An outdated or incompatible network adapter driver is one of the causes when your Wi-Fi adapter won’t connect to the router. If you recently had a Windows 10 upgrade, most likely the current driver was for a previous version.

Right click Start

Select Device Manager

Select Network Adapters and click to expand the list then check for the adapter name

Right click on the network adapter and select Update Driver

Select Search automatically for updated driver software

Restart your computer see if it fixes the USB Wi-Fi adapter is not connecting to the internet issue

Downloading and updating drivers manually from manufacturer’s website can damage your system by choosing and installing the wrong versions. In order to prevent that, we strongly suggest to do it automatically by using Tweakbit’s Driver Updater tool.

This tool is approved by Microsoft and Norton Antivirus and will help you not damaging your PC by downloading and installing the wrong driver versions. After several tests, our team concluded that this is the best automatized solution. Below you can find a quick guide how to do it.

Once installed, the program will start scanning your PC for outdated drivers automatically. Driver Updater will check your installed driver versions against its cloud database of the latest versions and recommend proper updates. All you need to do is wait for the scan to complete.

Upon scan completion, you get a report on all problem drivers found on your PC. Review the list and see if you want to update each driver individually or all at once. To update one driver at a time, click the ‘Update driver’ link next to the driver name. Or simply click the ‘Update all’ button at the bottom to automatically install all recommended updates.Note: Some drivers need to be installed in multiple steps so you will have to hit the ‘Update’ button several times until all of its components are installed.

Solution 4: Roll back the network adapter driver

If you recently installed a new network adapter driver, rolling back your driver to a previous version may help by doing the following:

Right click Start

Select Device Manager

Select Network adapters and click to expand the list then choose the network adapter name

Right click the network adapter, and then select Properties.

In Properties, select the Driver tab

Select Roll Back Driver, then follow the prompts

If the button is unavailable, that means there’s no driver to roll back to.

Solution 5: Uninstall the network adapter driver and restart

You can do this if your network connection stopped working after a recent update. Ensure you have drivers available as a backup, and visit the PC manufacturer’s website and download the latest network adapter driver from there.

Right click Start

Select Device Manager

Select Network adapters and click to expand the list then choose the network adapter name.

Right click the network adapter, and then select Uninstall

Select Delete the driver software for this device checkbox

Click Uninstall.

Restart your computer

If Windows doesn’t automatically install a driver, try to install the backup driver you saved before uninstalling.

Solution 6: Check Device Manager for valid wireless card entry

If there’s no valid entry in your computer’s device manager, delete any bogus entries and re-install the wireless adapter’s drivers. Check your Network connections to ensure you have a wireless network connection icon and the Properties of the icon are correctly configured with TCP/IPv4 protocol in the Network connections properties.

Solution 7: Ensure a vendor’s Wireless Utility is not running together with Windows’ native wireless utility

Ensure that no firewall prevents or blocks the wireless components to get to the network.

If all is well, and the Wi-Fi adapter won’t connect to the router, log in from a computer that is connected or can be connected to the wireless router with a wire, the disable the wireless security. Ensure the wireless broadcast is on and then try connecting with No Wireless security. When it is working, turn on the wireless security.

Note: Sometimes you may make a mistake in writing and retyping the security passphrase. You can circumvent this by copying it from the router’s menu, and then paste when asked by the wireless adapter.

Solution 8: Set up a new wireless connection

If you’ve tried all the other nine solutions and none of them work, document the required settings and confirm they’re correct, then completely delete your wireless connection or connections from your computer.

Set up a brand new wireless connection and see if it resolves the problem. This may resolve any settings that changed without any reason, or any corruption in original connection files.

Solution 9: Use network reset to reinstall network devices

This should be the last step you try if the other solutions don’t help when your Wi-Fi adapter won’t connect to the router. It can also help solve connection problems you might have after upgrading from a previous version of Windows to Windows 10, as well as fix problems where you can connect to the Internet but not to shared network drives. It removes any network adapters you have installed and the settings for them.

Note: to use network reset, you must run Windows 10 version 1607 or later.

Click Start

Select Settings

Select Network & Internet

Select Status> Network reset.

On the Network reset screen

Select Reset now

Click Yesto confirm.

Wait for your PC to restart and see if that fixes the problem.

Note: Network reset might set each one of your known network connections to a public network profile where your computer is not discoverable to other PCs and devices on the network, which can help make your PC more secure. If your PC is part of a homegroup, or used for file or printer sharing, you need to make it discoverable again by setting it to use a private network profile.

After using network reset, you may need to reinstall and set up other networking software you might be using, such as VPN client software or virtual switches from Hyper‑V.

Has any of these solutions fixed the problem? Let us know by leaving a comment in the section below.